Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has said that his government wants to break up the border dispute with Assam into smaller segments rather than looking at it as one big problem.
It would be easier to find solutions to the individual, smaller areas of dispute, rather than looking to solve the entire problem in one go, Sangma said after a meeting with members of the regional committees that have been set up to resolve the border dispute with Assam.
Three regional committees were set up to consider the dispute as it stands in Ri-Bhoi, West Khasi Hills and Jaiñtia Hills.
According to the CM, there is actually no dispute in the boundary in 20 to 30 per cent of the villages that fall under the larger areas of difference between the two states.
He also said that there will be certain areas that have complications and more homework needs to be done on these places. There are also some other areas that are very complicated and which would thus require more discussion.
Sangma also informed that the government will look at ethnicity, convenience and historical facts before settling on a course of action for individual areas.
“This entire process will require us to look at it from a different perspective and out-of-the-box solutions to these problems. Therefore, we decided that we need to look at the historical facts, but then we also need to see the current situation in which the people are living,” Sangma said. “We need to see what the mood of the people in these areas is and what sort of economic activities have been going on.”
He also said that the findings of the regional committees deals with the different kind of communities that are settled in the disputed areas, the number of villages that are there, the administrative convenience in these villages, whether they are in the Meghalaya census or in the Assam census and whether they are connected to the power grid in Meghalaya or Assam.
